We spent the second and third classes at Lisboa’s horseback riding club (Sociedade Hípica Portuguesa), gathering information for a story to be compiled in a single reportage with sketches done on site. The next post will feature my results for this final assignment. Stay tuned!

For the first time in its short history, the Urban Sketchers Portugal (USkP) convened, as a full-fledged non-profit organization. The necessity for a formal structure arose in 2014, due to the increasing cooperation links established with several other organizations and to be able to liaison with those organizations through official representatives.

The table was presided by a few of the founding fathers – Mário Linhares, Eduardo Salavisa, João Catarino, Pedro Cabral, Luís Ançã and José Louro. Around half of the associates were present and, as it happened in the Urban Sketchers International Symposium in Lisboa in 2011, a silent auction was held, with sketches volunteered by some of the associates. The people present would bid for each of the sketches by writing their name and their bid below the previous bidder. The income from the auction benefited the USkP.

The odd name chosen for the sketching workshop held last week at Giv Lowe gallery, in the bowels of Lisboa, has to do with the crossover between pop culture and popular traditions that illustrator and comic book artist Nuno Saraiva so often portrays in his work.

There were but a bunch of us sketching the semi-burlesque Gogo Lolita. In the end, Nuno pitched the idea that our sketches joined his own in the exhibition that surrounded us in the very gallery where the workshop was held. His exhibition shows large prints, side-by-side with the originals, of the beautiful illustrations that decorated the city during and well after June’s festivities.

Even though we’re just hours away, I invite you all to show up at 7pm, at Giv Lowe, in Largo de São Paulo, for the finissage of Nuno Saraiva‘s exhibition. And, by the way, to take a peek of the sketches from the workshop.